Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is a smart location newsman who’s been testing connected gadgets since 2013. Previously a contributor to Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, and US News.
A time aft launching a new line of Roomba vacuum cleaners, iRobot Corp. has warned investors that it could unopen down successful the adjacent 12 months unless it tin refinance its indebtedness aliases find a buyer. According to its latest financial filings, iRobot is heavy successful debt. It spent $3.6 cardinal to amend the position of a $200 cardinal indebtedness it took retired successful 2023 while a now-defunct deal pinch Amazon was successful reappraisal — successful bid to get much clip to fig retired its adjacent steps.
Since taking retired that indebtedness from the Carlyle Group and facing expanding title from Chinese manufacturers, iRobot has not recovered a measurement to go profitable again and says it expects to incur losses for “the foreseeable future.” With nary clear way to paying disconnected the debt, the early looks bleak for the inventor of the robot vacuum.
This follows a tumultuous twelvemonth for the robotics company, which lost its CEO and laminitis Colin Angle, saw the planned acquisition by Amazon autumn isolated nether regulatory scrutiny, and laid disconnected complete 50 percent of its workforce.
In its quarterly financial report published March 12, the company, which saw its gross successful the U.S. driblet by 47 percent successful the 4th quarter, said it had “initiated a general strategical reappraisal to measure a wide scope of alternatives, including, but not constricted to, exploring a imaginable waste aliases strategical transaction and refinancing our debt.”
If its caller statement of products is not a success, which the study notes is wholly imaginable owed to “consumer demand, competition, macroeconomics conditions and tariff policies,” and nary different recourse is recovered to salary disconnected its debt, iRobot says the institution whitethorn beryllium incapable to proceed beyond 12 months.
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